“Time Well Spent”: The Ideology of Temporal Disconnection as a Means for Digital Well-Being

Authors

  • Ana Jorge CICANT/Lusófona University
  • Inês Amaral Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra
  • Artur de Matos Alves TÉLUQ University, CRICIS (UQAM)

Keywords:

operating system, quantified self, techlash, screen time, smartphone, platforms, social media

Abstract

After facing an intense negative reaction to their accumulation of social, political, and economic power and influence, several tech and social media companies rolled out “digital well-being” tools during the second half of 2018. This article examines the technological and discursive construction of “digital well-being” as enacted through operating system-based tools (Screen Time and Do Not Disturb—iOS, Digital Wellbeing—Android, My Analytics—Microsoft) and social media platform application functions (Your Time—Facebook, Time Watched—YouTube, Your Activity—Instagram). While the companies’ discourse deploys an imaginary centered around ethics and a normative experience accentuating the willfulness and empowerment of the user, the sociomaterial analysis of the interfaces and features shows that they envisage simple, familiar, and limited possibilities of disconnecting. Therefore, agency is limited, and the well-being outcomes are indeterminate, restricted to quantifying time or controlling the intentionality of connectivity.

Author Biographies

Ana Jorge, CICANT/Lusófona University

Dr. Ana Jorge is Research Coordinator at CICANT and Associate Professor at Lusófona University. She holds a Communication Sciences PhD from NOVA University of Lisbon, where she also conducted postdoctoral research on Media Education, both with individual grants from the national science agency, FCT. Ana researches on children, youth and media, audiences, celebrity culture, digital culture, and she has taken part in international projects as EU Kids Online and RadioActive101, and networks as COST Actions Transforming Audiences and DigiLitEY. Ana’s scholarship appears in journals such as Celebrity Studies, Social Media and Society and Journal of Children and Media, and collections such as Childhood and Celebrity (Routledge, 2017), The Future of Audiences (Palgrave, 2018) and Celebrity and Youth (Peter Lang, 2019). She has co-edited Digital Parenting (Nordicom, 2018). She serves as Vice-chair of ECREA’s Digital Culture and Communication section (2016-20).

Inês Amaral, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra

Dr. Inês Amaral is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. PhD in Communication Sciences from the University of Minho, Inês is a Researcher at the Centre for Studies in Communication and Society and an Associate Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies. She is the PI of the project MyGender - Mediated young adults practices: advancing gender justice in and across mobile apps and Co-PI of the project MediaTrust.Lab. She has been a researcher in international and national projects, being currently a member of the project team (De)Coding Masculinities. Her main research areas include audiences and media consumption; participation and social media; media and digital literacy; gender and media. Inês has published in book series as Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Springer, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020), and collections such as The Future of Audiences (Palgrave, 2018) and Perspectives of Design (Springer, 2020).

Artur de Matos Alves, TÉLUQ University, CRICIS (UQAM)

Dr. Artur de Matos Alves is Assistant Professor at TÉLUQ University, and Researcher at the CRICIS research centre (UQAM). He holds a PhD in the specialty of Communication, Systems, and Technologies from the NOVA University of Lisbon, with a dissertation on the social and political impacts of emerging technologies. His research on philosophy of technology, online transparency, and the societal impacts of emerging technologies, new media and cyber conflict has been presented in international conferences, books, and journals since 2008. The book Criador e Criatura (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal, 2013) reflects his PhD dissertation. Artur edited the book Unveiling the Posthuman (Inter-Disciplinary Press, UK, 2012).

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Published

2022-02-27

Issue

Vol. 16 (2022)

Section

Articles

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